


hands on each other's hearts

by HuiLian



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: And that's exactly what this is, Bickering, Fluff, Gen, RotT Spoilers, i loved every single one of the four monarch's interaction in ROTT and I WANTED MORE, the working title for this is "four monarchs squabbling"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29493393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuiLian/pseuds/HuiLian
Summary: Moving an entire country was hard work, but in the middle of it all, the four monarchs of the Little Peninsula found the time to be themselves (and bicker to their heart's content).
Relationships: Attolia | Irene &; Eddis | Helen & Eugenides & Sophos, Attolia | Irene/Eugenides, Eddis | Helen/Sophos, Eugenides & Sophos (Queen's Thief)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	hands on each other's hearts

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this fic has been in my head for MONTHS but brain.exe was not cooperating then. But it is here now! a huge thank you to [ Mar ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieswelove/pseuds/storieswelove) for beta-ing this fic (and for listening to my ramblings)! I love you so much!!!

The king of Attolia, Annux of the Little Peninsula, walked alone across the halls of the Eddisian palace. This would not have happened in his own palace, but they are in Eddis, and Eddisian customs take precedence. No one in Eddis would dream of stopping the Thief from roaming the halls of the palace of Eddis, no matter how much the captain of his guard protests. 

He slipped easily from one empty room to another, avoiding the many sets of eyes that, even now, still lingered in the palace. It was easier than it used to be. There were many empty rooms in the palace of Eddis, and not all of them are because their inhabitants had moved to the lowlands. 

Still, even with the abundance of empty rooms and the decrease in the number of guards, he was forced to backtrack a few times to escape notice. The guards’ patrol routes had changed since the last time he was here. A display of caution for the queen of Eddis that he could not help but be pleased about, despite the inconvenience it was currently causing him. 

The guards had no chance in catching him, however. There was no man alive that knew these halls better than he, and there was no place on earth that he knows better. His own palace was a close second, but he had grown up here, and he knew every single nook and cranny etched into these halls. 

With a quick look around to make sure that his presence remained unnoticed, Eugenides slipped through an unremarkable door in an unremarkable hallway. He arrived at his destination. 

*

“There you are!” the king of Sounis cried out, carrying his daughter in his arms. Sounis was talking to the man sitting at the table in the library, looking for all the world like he was at home. Sounis’s daughter, on the other hand, was mesmerized by the book that was in front of the man. 

Eugenides, who, for all intents and purposes _was_ at home in the library of Eddis’s palace, looked up. 

“Everyone is looking for you,” Sounis said, looking at him meaningfully. 

With a wave of his hand, Eugenides dismissed that. “Helen knows where I am. If they truly need me, they’ll find me. Come on, Sophos, sit down. Don’t tell me you want to join that theatrical production in the courtroom.”

Sounis shook his head, but gave a small smile of concession. He took his own seat next to Eugenides, settling his daughter in his own lap. She immediately started pawing on the book in front of Gen, who deftly moved it out of her grasp. 

“Feisty, aren’t you, Gitta?” he asked the princess of Sounis. 

Her father chuckled. “She was getting antsy in the nursery, so I brought her on an adventure.” He bounced her several times in his lap, before looking up to the other king’s eyes and said, “Speaking of children, where are yours?”

Eugenides made a face. “With Teleus,” he said, sighing. “They scream if I try to take them before they are ready to be separated from him.”

Sounis laughed outright at this. “Are their screams as loud as yours?”

“Louder,” Attolis said mournfully. 

Unfortunately, the princess of Sounis chose this time to also scream her displeasure at the fact that her father had stopped bouncing her in his lap. The two kings looked at each other for a moment, before Sounis placed his daughter back in his arms and started walking around the room to try to calm her. 

Satisfied at having the attention of the two men firmly on her once again, she quieted down. Sounis made to sit down again, but Eugenides stopped him by saying, “You’ll just make her cry again. I think she wants our full and undivided attention.”

“Speaking from experience, Gen?”

The king of Attolia, Annux of the Little Peninsula, snuck out his tongue, looking very unkingly indeed. “Do you want me to help you or not?”

“Alright, alright. What do you have in mind?”

“Do you know Hern’s poetry?”

“Yes,” Sophos answered. 

“You do?” Gen looked up at him, surprise etched on his face. But one look at the younger king’s face stopped the surprise in its tracks. “You do,” he said again, before turning to look at the child in Sophos’s arms and continuing, “Well, I’m no goddess of scribes, but I think I can do well enough for the princess of Sounis.”

“I don’t know, Gen,” Sounis teased. “I think the princess of Sounis deserves the best, don’t you agree?”

“Are you implying that I am not the best?”

“Did you not imply that yourself?”

“Sophos!” Eugenides said in exaggerated surprise. “I didn’t know you have it in you! Do you talk like this to my dear cousin too?” 

“I do not, because she, unlike you, is not insufferable. Now, I believe you promised me a recitation of one of Hern’s poems.”

“Excuse you, I promised _Gitta_ a recitation of one of Hern’s poems.” Eugenides then plucked the princess of Sounis from her father’s arms, who, for all his teasing of the other man, relinquished his daughter easily enough. “Now, my darling niece, shall we ask your father to leave the room so that I can give you a private recitation?”

The princess of Sounis lets out a happy gurgle that was more excitement at being held by a different person than an actual agreement, but Attolis seemed happy enough to take it as so. 

“See, Sophos?” he said to the other man. “Your daughter agrees with me.”

At that, Sounis laughed again. “Very well, then. I shall leave the room for you and Gitta. But the moment I exit that door without the princess of Sounis in my arms, her retinue will come hounding down.”

“You would _not_.”

“I would.”

Eugenides looked at the other king with horror in his eyes, because that was a threat, and the other man knew perfectly well that that is so. He shook his head, and said, “Bested in my own game by Useless the Younger! I never thought this day would come!”

Sounis gave him a mock bow from where he’s seated, and said, “A recitation, if you please, my king?”

“Oh, very well. Gitta will just have to share.” He adjusted the girl in his arm, deftly positioning her away from his hook, which, if no longer as sharp as a knife, was still dangerous enough for tiny wandering hands. Then, with two of his audiences enraptured, even though only one was truly listening, the King of Attolia began his recitation. 

*

“I never want to see another amphora in my life!” the queen of Eddis exclaimed as she burst through the door on her library, interrupting her cousin’s recitation. She threw herself onto the nearest seat, continuing in her rant. “What does it matter if we take ten or eleven amphorae of that particular design down to Sounis! And why do they have to have _me_ decide on it!”

Eugenides, recognizing his cousin’s mood, and fearing for the fate of the scrolls he was reading before he was interrupted by Sounis, stopped in his recitation and gently transferred his niece onto her mother’s waiting arms. 

Still incensed, but a calmer now that she had her daughter in her arms, Eddis continued. “They asked me the same question for every piece of furniture or decoration! What do I care if I have one less vase to bring down to Sounis!”

It was then that the queen of Attolia, who had been following Eddis to the library, albeit at a more sedate pace, entered the room. She spoke for a moment with the increasingly large group of people outside the library, the amalgamation of the retinues of attendants and guards for the three monarchs, before closing the door on them. 

“Oh, I remember doing that. My entourage was to bring thirty pitchers of wine, and I had to _personally_ select every single one of them,” Attolia said as she walked across the room to take her own seat. She glanced at her husband, promising retribution later for the fact that there were only three retinues of attendants and guards outside the door, not four, before asking, “Children?” which was promptly answered by Eugenides with, “Teleus.”

She gave a sharp nod, and turned back to Eddis to shrug. “Just say that you trust their judgement and discretion in these matters. It’s what I do.”

“Makes you glad that it’s not _your_ duty to move all these things, doesn’t it, Sophos?” Eugenides said. 

Eddis adjusted her grip on her daughter, and then pointed one finger towards her cousin. “You are _not_ getting out of this that easily, Gen. There are piles of your stuff to be sorted out.”

“My stuff?” Eugenides asked.

“ _Your stuff!_ They found your stashes! All those bits and bobs and knick-knacks that you stole! I would have just given them back to their owners, but none of them will take it if it isn’t you giving the stuff back to them personally!”

“Ah,” Eugenides said. “That stuff.”

“I thought everything the Thief of Eddis stole has to be dedicated to their god?” Sounis asked. 

“Not _everything_ ,” Eugenides answered. “Besides, those were practice. It was hardly worth the effort to place them on my god’s altar.”

“Hardly worth the effort or not,” Eddis countered, “they are your things now, and you _will_ deal with them, if I have to tie you down to the courtroom myself.”

“The captain of my guard might take issue with that,” Attolis pointed out.

“He won’t once I’ve explained why I’ve done it,” Eddis said darkly. 

Eugenides looked to his wife for support, but she simply raised an eyebrow and said, “I believe that Teleus might make an exception for Eddis. And to see whether or not tying you down works.”

He gaped at his wife, who smiled serenely and adjusted her skirts. He looked at Sounis, and then Eddis, before turning back to his wife and shaking his head. “Oh, I see you’ve all discussed this without me.”

“Discuss what?” Attolia replied. 

“Outsmarting me in my own game.”

Attolia’s smile changed. “Are you losing your touch, my king? Shall I call on Petrus to examine you?”

“Don’t forget Galen,” Eddis added from where she was now calmly seated, playing with her daughter. 

“Yes,” Attolia nodded. “It would not do to slight Eddis’s royal physician, especially now that we’re in Eddis.”

The outraged look that Eugenides sent to his wife was broken by Sounis’s laughter, which was then joined by the two queens. Dejected, Eugenides pouted, before he walked over to where his wife was sitting and sat on the ground beside her feet, resting his head on her lap.

The laughter quieted down after a while, which was immediately taken advantage of by Eugenides to complain. “I am surrounded by treachery,” Eugenides said from his wife’s lap. 

“Poor king,” Sounis teased, which caused the laughter to begin again, even louder this time.

Once all of them had calmed down enough, Eddis turned to her husband and said, “As enjoyable as insulting Gen is, it does remind me. Has the Magus sent his list?”

“He mentioned working on it in his last letter, but as for the actual list itself, no, not yet,” Sounis answered. 

“Ah,” Eddis made a face. “I was hoping to get started on that. Transporting all these books down to the lowlands is going to be hard enough, we do not need the additional difficulty in trying to do it in one go.”

Sounis shrugged, and said, “It might still come in his next letter, which should reach us either late today or tomorrow. Besides, there’s no reason why we need to—”

“You’re moving my library to Sounis?” Eugenides jumped up. 

Eddis and Sounis stopped in their planning to look at him, before Eddis said, “Well, of course, Gen. We’re moving _everything_. Or would you prefer to leave them here to be destroyed?”

“Of course not!” Eugenides said. “But to _Sounis_? Really, Helen?”

Eddis blinked at him once, before bursting into laughter once again. “Did you expect them to come with you to Attolia?” she said between bouts of laughter. 

“Well, not exactly,” Eugenides sputtered, “but _Sounis?_ ”

“What grievances do you have with my library, Gen?” the aforementioned Sounis said. 

Eugenides turned to his friend and said, “There’s no way I’m trusting the contents of my library to Useless the Younger!”

Sounis would have protested, but he wasn’t given a chance. Instead, his wife said, “ _My_ library.”

“Did you not swear your loyalty to me?” Eugenides asked his cousin. 

“My loyalty, yes,” Eddis nodded. “But not the contents of my library.”

The two of them stared at each other for a moment, before Eugenides looked at his wife for support. However, if he was expecting reinforcement from that direction, he was sorely mistaken. “She is right,” Attolia said, looking directly at her husband’s eyes. “I made the vows myself.”

“Sophos,” Eugenides quickly pivoted his attention to the younger man, realizing that his wife would give him not an ounce of support in this matter. “Tell Helen that this is _my_ library.”

Sounis was, in his heart, a kind man, but since he was so recently insulted by his friend, he felt no particular need to be kind just now. He took his time in settling in his seat, enjoying the pleading looks that Eugenides was giving him, before finally saying, “I remember feeling so jealous of your library when I first saw it.” He leaned forward, smirking as he met Eugenides’s eyes. “I look forward to adding them to my own collection. Especially now that I know Hern’s book of poems is in here somewhere.”

The only thing that can be heard afterwards was one indignant shout and three ringing peals of laughter. 

**Author's Note:**

> look. look. almost every interaction that has the four of them in one room ends up in bickering one way or another. and I LOVE it
> 
> thank you so much for reading! maybe leave a kudos or comment to bless this author in her endeavours?


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